Association for Behavior Analysis International

The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) was created to measure derived relational responding (i.e., response bias) especially toward socially-charged stimuli. The IRAP measures latency between a) various stimulus pairing onsets and b) responses to those pairings via rules given to participants. IRAP response allocations are particularly interesting when they do not match self-report verbal descriptions of preference; such differences may indicate inconsistencies between implicit and explicit biases. Drake et al. (2015) examined response-time biases for the 2012 presidential election and found IRAP scores correlated with self-reports. However, unbalanced representation of political affiliation was a limitation regarding the results. The studies presented herein pursued a more balanced representation of political affiliation, while examining three different stimulus pairings that were potentially relevant to the 2016 election: presidential candidate names (Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton), socioeconomic status (rich people and poor people), and gender (man and woman). These stimuli were paired with a good or bad evaluative word during each trial. Correlations between IRAP and self-report data were examined. Implications for basic research with the IRAP, as well as the social significance of the findings, will be discussed.

The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) is a latency-based behavioral measure of “natural verbal relations” (Barnes-Holmes, Hayden, & Barnes-Holmes, 2008). These natural verbal relations include what some call implicit biases – quick responses which are influenced by one’s conditioning history and yet may differ from one’s own explicit report. The IRAP bears an advantage over other implicit measures in that it may assess more specific relations among stimulus combinations than other measures. For example, the IRAP has been used to demonstrate that negative evaluations of candidates and not just positive evaluations factor into voting intentions (Drake et al., 2015). The 2016 presidential election is noteworthy due to substantially negative views of each candidate, even among voters from their respective political parties. Furthermore, past studies of political attitudes with implicit measures have shown a high degree of convergence with self-report. The current study utilized data provided by college undergraduates from two universities in the mid-western and southern United States. Although self-reports revealed negative and/or neutral sentiment toward both candidates, the IRAP generally revealed positive and/or neutral effects and little evidence of convergence with self-report. These data will be discussed in light of methodological considerations as well as future directions in IRAP research.

Starting a business in any field can be a scary proposition and often times evokes overwhelming questions like: Am I ready for this? Can I afford this? What if I fail? These questions can be amplified in emerging industries like Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) where the field itself is already on shaky and unstable ground. Moreover, starting a business in a booming field like ABA can be very tempting, especially since demand for services exceeds supply. It is easy to see why so many people want to start an ABA business. However, being prepared for successfully building an enduring and ethical enterprise is a critical set of skills for those brave ABA souls who endeavor to realize their most passionate ambitions. This panel will answer some of the most important questions about starting a business in ABA from ethics to finance to marketing and even OBM as it relates to starting and running a business in ABA.

In light of the great benefits to conducting interdisciplinary work, it is not uncommon for practitioners to harbor misconceptions without a rich understanding of each contributing discipline. A panel discussion of the impact and perceptions of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and Positive Behavior Support (PBS) will be conducted by 4 Board Certified Behavior Analysts that work in the domain of PBS. Foundations of ABA and PBS will be discussed from the early history of ABA influencing the application of PBS. Arguments over the past few decades will be presented from both sides of the debate. ABA and PBS in practice will be reviewed including common PBS practices and terminology, highlighting how the practices are rooted to behavior analytic principles. Finally, common misconceptions of PBS will be presented and addressed (i.e., PBS is fluffy, PBS only does antecedent intervention, PBS is not ABA). By debunking these fallacies, the goal is to disseminate proper understanding of PBS and facilitate a more thorough appreciation for the principles of behavior analysis as instrumental in the application of PBS.

Quantitative models have been used primarily by basic researchers to understand basic behavioral processes. However, with the increasing interest in translational research, quantitative analyses seem to have an increased relevance for applied behavior analysts. The question is under what conditions do quantitative analyses have utility for the work of applied behavior analysts? The symposium will feature presentations by four researchers followed by comments by a discussant. First, Brian Martens will present on the dynamics of choice in preschoolers' behavior in a natural setting. Next, Brian Greer's presentation will focus on the use of behavioral momentum theory to mitigate treatment relapse following functional communication treatment of challenging behavior of individuals with autism spectrum disorder. The third presenter, Christopher Podlesnik, will discuss how quantitative models can aid in predicting how environmental events will interact with behavioral processes to produce behavioral outputs. The final presenter, Derek Reed, will present on behavioral economics, with particular focus on analysis of reinforcer demand in natural settings and its implications for work in educational settings. David Wacker will serve as discussant.

Functional communication training (FCT) has strong empirical support for its use when treating socially reinforced problem behavior. However, treatment effects often deteriorate when FCT procedures are challenged, leading to the recurrence of problem behavior, decreased use of the functional communication response (FCR), or both (Mace et al., 2010; Volkert, Lerman, Call, & Trosclair-Lasserre, 2009; Wacker et al., 2011). Researchers have accordingly described a number of strategies to improve the efficacy of differential-reinforcement procedures (e.g., FCT) when challenged. For example, Wacker et al. (2011) assessed the maintenance of FCT-treatment effects by periodically exposing the FCR to periods of extinction and found that additional exposure to FCT helped guard against the disruptive impact of later periods of extinction. Basic researchers have described this and similar modifications to FCT procedures based on behavioral momentum theory (BMT) that should also help mitigate treatment relapse. Our research team has recently begun investigating these BMT-inspired modifications to FCT. In this presentation, I will share the results of three preliminary studies and describe our ongoing work in this area.

Quantitative frameworks provide precise predictions about factors influencing phenomena. Behavioral models specify how environmental events interact with behavioral and biological processes to produce behavioral outputs. Behavioral momentum theory specifies that persistence and likelihood of relapse of operant behavior is positively related to reinforcement rates in a stimulus context and negatively related to the force of disruption conditions. Studies from several laboratories examining these assumptions provide important insights into variables influencing persistence and relapse but also reveal some of these assumptions to be incorrect. This talk will examine efforts and challenges to explaining the behavioral processes underlying persistence and relapse with behavioral momentum theory.

Behavioral analyses of the stimulus control for the phenomena characterized as bi-directional address critical issues in verbal behavioral development, verbal behavior, and relational responding. Laboratories have investigated naming as (a) derived relations, (b) its effects on other derived relations, (c) as well as the identification of experiences that contribute to the onset of naming as a behavioral developmental cusp. We present the perspectives of four laboratories on bi-directional naming.

The target audience consists of all behavior analysts with a theoretical and/or practical interest in the emergence, "generativity," or "explosion" of verbal skills in young children, and in how the basic behavioral principles can be utilized in teaching children with language delays more effectively.

Naming types have been identified as verbal behavior developmental cusps that result from a history of experiences. Different types of naming have been identified according to the stimuli controlling stimuli including: (a) naming involving actions, (b) additional auditory stimuli, (c) exclusion conditions, (d) familiar and unfamiliar stimuli, and (e) additional auditory stimuli. Some children who do not demonstrate naming can do so after several interventions and their educational prognosis improves as a result.

Humans often solve problems by engaging in a variety of strategies, some of which involve talking to themselves. This requires that they speak with understanding. Bidirectional Naming (BiN) is the term used (in behavior analysis) to refer to the ability to react as a listener to one's own speaker behavior. In this talk, I will describe basic, translational, and applied studies supporting the role of BiN in the development of complex skills such as categorization and analogical reasoning. Evidence for the role of BiN as a problem solving strategy comes from positive performances on complex matching-to-sample tasks after the use of verbal behavior training alone, and also from spontaneous vocalizations on the specific verbal strategies utilized by participants during or after task completion.

In the paper that gave rise to the study of stimulus equivalence, Sidman (1971) used the terms name/naming to generically designate responses under the discriminative control of pictures and printed words. In Skinnerian terms, he was referring to tact and textual relations. In Sidman's study, these discriminated operants emerged as a by-product of learning stimulus-stimulus relations. Although the response in a tact (or textual behavior) occurs under the control of a specific stimulus, if that stimulus is a member of an equivalence class, this implies that the response comes under the control of the class as a whole. The class, in turn, involves at least the primary item or environmental aspect, the spoken word/s, which was/were conventionally related to this item by the learner's verbal community [in the tact], and the corresponding printed word/s [in textual behavior]. Consequently, the learning history established listening and speaking behaviors in the same individual. This presentation will illustrate the formation of equivalence classes and the development of listening comprehension, tact, and textual behaviors in a sample of deaf children with cochlear implants.

We compared a resetting to a non-resetting differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) procedure to reduce stereotypy exhibited by young boy with autism. During the resetting DRO, a reinforcer was delivered contingent upon the absence of stereotypy during the DRO interval. If stereotypy occurred, the DRO interval was immediately reset. The non-resetting DRO procedure was identical, except that contingent upon stereotypy, the DRO interval continued until it expired; a new DRO interval then began. Results indicate that the DRO procedures were equally effective to reduce stereotypy, but the participant preferred the resetting DRO procedure.

The development of play skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder is an ever present need in educational and treatment programs. In the first paper, the authors will present the use of matrix training to teach play skills to three preschool student with Autism Spectrum Disorder using same-age peer trainers. The results will be discussed in terms using matrix training as a generative instructional method for play and the potential benefit for using peers as trainers. The authors of the second paper evaluated a multi-component treatment package including blocking stereotypy, differential reinforcement, and backward chaining, to increase functional leisure engagement (FLE) in three school-aged children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. These results will be discussed in terms of their effect on increased FLE as well as decreases in stereotypy. Both procedures will be discussed in terms of their generalization to novel peers and toys respectively and the potential benefit as interventions to be utilized within school settings.

Matrix training is a generative instructional approach where stimulus pairings are taught with the goal of emergent responses occurring without direct instruction. The matrix in this study was comprised of four character-action pairs aligned on a vertical and horizontal axis respectively. The researcher trained peers without identified disabilities to provide instructions and feedback to three children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) for four character-action pairings. For all participants, untrained responses for the remaining character-action pairings emerged in 73% to 100% of opportunities. In addition, responses for all participants generalized to novel peers. For two of the three participants, responses also generalized to independent play. Results of this study suggest that matrix training mediated by a peer can be an effective and efficient method for teaching sociodramatic play skills.

Research with individuals with disabilities has demonstrated the utility of intervention approaches to address toy play, also referred to as functional leisure engagement (FLE). Examples include prompting FLE, blocking stereotypy, and differentially reinforcing appropriate FLE with social or automatic (i.e., access to stereotypy) reinforcers. Backward chaining has yet to be evaluated, but may be useful for establishing more complex FLE. The current study employed a treatment package consisting of these components with three school-aged children with autism in a therapeutic classroom. Effects were evaluated during pretest and posttest sessions, which consisted of free access to toys in a novel setting. The percentage of session with FLE and stereotypy (two participants only) was evaluated using a multiple probe design across participants. Results showed all participants demonstrated an increase in FLE and two participants showed decreased stereotypy. Feasibility for classroom implementation is discussed.

Conclusions derived from current functional assessment practices heavily rely on indirect methods for gathering data (e.g. FAST, MAS). When a function is experimentally tested, current practices pose ethical, practical and theoretical concerns. Both approaches are problematic in that indirect data produces inaccurate and imprecise data, and experimental methods are typically not driven by a hypothesis, directly reinforce problematic behaviors, and do not involve simultaneous establishment of appropriate alternative behaviors. The first presentation will focus on a comparison between two indirect and one direct data collection method to generate hypothesis regarding function that is more accurate and efficient. The second will propose alternative experimental methods to test a subset of hypothesized functions and involve teaching alternative responses and do not reinforce problematic behaviors. The symposium will conclude with an argument to support (1) direct observation of consequences be used in place of indirect data to develop hypothesis and (2) use of use of alternative experimental methods such a free-operant and trial-based functional analysis procedures. The proposed methodology provides a more ethical, conceptually systematic, and practical assessment of function.

Indirect data obtained through interviews such as the Functional Analysis Screening Tool (FAST) and Motivational Assessment Scale (MAS) are commonly used to develop hypothesis regarding function of problematic behavior despite the known inaccuracies produced by indirect data. While researchers use the FAST and MAS as a simple way to raise hypothesis, such use can be problematic if (1) the instrument fails to include the actual function as part of the hypothesis (miss) and (2) does not filter enough possibilities (false alarms). Those outcomes may mislead or waste assessors’ and clients’ time and efforts. The current research aimed to compare the FAST and MAS to a direct observation of consequences that follow problematic behaviors (Beacon Consequence Analysis Form - BCAF). Data from twelve children whose function of problematic behaviors were confirmed by a trial-based or free-operant functional analysis were used in this study. A comparison of the instruments hypothesis and confirmed function was conducted and rates of hits, correct rejection, misses, and false alarms calculated. The results supported the use of the BCAF which had the highest rates of hits (100%) and correct rejections (93.3%) and lowest rates of misses (0%) and false alarms (6.7%) to raise hypothesis regarding potential function.

Skinner defined functional analysis as the identification contingencies of reinforcement responsible for the acquisition of maintenance of responses. Iwata et al (1994) introduced a procedure that involved direct manipulations of the antecedent and consequences in order to experimentally determine the function of the problem behavior. While its approach was and has been now widely accepted some ethical, practical and theoretical concerns may be raised. For example, the appropriateness of its wide use may be questionable in some situations due to its directly reinforcing specific topographies of problematic behavior, and it assumes an invariable relationship between antecedent conditions and the consequences maintaining problematic behavior (e.g., problematic behaviors occurring under demand conditions are always reinforced by escape) which is not always the case. For example, a demand condition may function as a discriminative stimulus that attention (follow through with the demand) will be delivered. The present study attempts to identify a trial-based and free-operant alternative to conducting a functional analysis that involves teaching functional communication responses rather than reinforcing problematic behaviors. This method will be described and examples concerning functional analysis of multiple topographies such as prompt dependency, aggressions, and tantrums will be reviewed.

This session is coupled with, and immediately follows, a SQAB tutorial on Behavioral Economics and Obesity presented by Dr. Erin Rasmussen. Panelists will be asked to speak briefly about their research program and to bring questions designed to foster discussion with audience members. The goal is to generate ideas and collaborative efforts among basic, translational, and applied scientists. The tutorial and panel discussion has arisen because the Society for the Quantitative Analysis of Behavior (SQAB), an organization that emphasizes fundamental sciences related to behavior analysis, meets immediately before ABAI. The tandem meetings of these two organizations present opportunities for attendees to hear about core sciences related to behavior analysis. The SQAB tutorials have provided an excellent spur for such discussions but we SQAB and ABAIs Science Board wish to take this a step further. This panel discussion, which represents a partnership between SQAB and ABAI, will create a setting in which basic and applied scientists, as well as practitioners, can meet to discuss applications of the topics raised in a SQAB tutorial.

individuals interested in applying the fundamental principles of behavioral economics to reducing caloric intake of increasing caloric expenditure.

This presentation will highlight the four big ideas of effective instruction. These big ideas include (a) setting expectations, (b) increasing student engagement, (c) providing praise, and (d) correcting errors. Research supporting these four elements will be shared. Illustrative videos and participant practice using research validated programs will be included in the presentation. Expectations involve a focus on establishing expectation routines and teaching them explicitly. Increasing student engagement will focus on choral responding, use of white boards, and other response card requirements. Providing praise will emphasize the use of general and special praise statements. Finally, correcting errors will involve modeling and firming practices to ensure future success. Problem solving scenarios will also be shared.

Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) provides a useful technology and conceptual basis for changing the behavior of individuals in work settings. This symposium focuses on applications of OBM in human services agencies. The first presentation describe working in Early Intervention clinics for children with autism to improve their delivery of behavioral intervention. The second presentation describes and discusses the use of social validity measures in human services in the context of organizational and staff performance improvements.

In clinical settings, it is important to train behavior technicians to run programs correctly and maximize all teaching opportunities. In this study, the total number of teaching opportunities and the percentage of programs with at leave five learning opportunities was targeted for improvement. Results from the Performance Diagnostic Checklist-Human Services-2 assessment tool indicated staff fluency deficits. A Precision Teaching intervention was employed to increase fluency across skill acquisition programs. Results suggest that the intervention was effective in both increasing the number of total teaching trials per hour and increasing the number of programs with at least five teaching trials.

Goals, procedures and outcomes oh my! Social validity is an important element to our practice and service. While you may be able to present some compelling data to show the impact of your behavioral intervention, there is one piece of data that can mean long-term success or failure for your plans, namely social validity. This presentation will highlight the importance of social validity, and a design for educating practitioners on including social validity as part of their practice. Emphasis will be placed on how social validity should be integrated before, during and following any behavioral intervention, and case examples towards raising the bar of our profession.

Individuals with disabilities are disproportionately more likely to be overweight or obese compared to the general population. With the other health concerns that go along with disabilities, specifically Down Syndrome, this creates the need for a program to increase physical activity. There are several biological characteristics common among individuals with the diagnosis which make them more prone to obesity, such as hypothyroidism, a lower basal metabolic rate, and an increase in leptin along with behavioral characteristics such as oppositional behavior, noncompliance, and inattention (Murray & Ryan-Krause, 2010). Current literature on the use of activity trackers for behavioral intervention is available, but none have specifically focused on individuals with disabilities. The present study utilized fitness trackers to make slow, incremental increases in the daily walking activity of adults with Down Syndrome who are considered obese. The study included five participants living with their families, four males and one female, who ranged in age from 22 to 30. Participants were supported in the intervention by an adult caregiver, which in each case was their mother. The intervention included the provision of a Fitbit worn daily, weekly performance goals, daily performance monitoring on a phone app, weekly data review by phone with the researcher and a caregiver, and immediate reinforcers for goal attainment delivered in the home setting by the adult caregiver in the household. Following implementation of the intervention, all participants increased their frequency of steps taken per day 30% over baseline averages.

Self-control can be defined as choosing a smaller, immediate aversive event over a larger, delayed aversive event. Children with developmental disabilities have been found to respond impulsively when given the choice between aversive events that differ based on magnitude and difficulty. However, other variables may affect aversiveness (e.g., qualitative differences between tasks). To directly assess and subsequently treat self-control choice involving aversive events that are qualitatively different, it is necessary to assess relative task aversiveness. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to (a) empirically identify a hierarchy of aversive tasks for three individuals with developmental disabilities by evaluating their average latency to avoidant responding when presented with each task, (b) assess baseline levels of self control, and (c) introduce an empirically validated treatment, which involves adding a delay to both tasks. For three individuals with developmental disabilities, low- and high-aversive tasks were identified, and each participant initially made impulsive choices (i.e., chose the delayed, high-aversive task). Following treatment, each participant made more self-control choices. Results suggest that there may be a need to broaden the types of variables included in self-control assessments and interventions.

Teaching adults with intellectual disabilities writing skills in the context of a college class ensures a learning context more typical to that experienced by same-age peers, while simultaneously promoting the inclusion of individuals with intellectual disabilities in a university setting and capitalizing on the educational opportunities afforded by integrating same-age peers (i.e., undergraduate students) in the classroom. We used a package intervention to teach a class of seven adults with intellectual disabilities to write cover letters for job applications. The treatment package included lecture with a modified classroom response system, cover letter templates, delayed feedback on prior letters, and general praise for on-task behavior delivered by undergraduate student peers. Although the treatment was successful, the independent contribution of each component (e.g., delayed feedback) is unknown. Nevertheless, results indicate that adults with intellectual disabilities can and should be integrated into university settings. Recommendations for increasing the feasibility of such educational practices will be discussed.

Mathematical competence is imperative for having a range of daily living, leisure, and career opportunities. Individuals with severe disabilities, including moderate to severe intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder, have difficulty with mathematical problem solving in part due to the chained nature of problem solving. Each step is dependent upon correct execution of the one before, and errors in prior steps can prevent arrival at a correct solution. Pictorial self-instruction has a history of effectiveness for teaching chained tasks to students with severe disabilities, but is only recently being used in chained mathematical tasks. This symposia will include (a) a conceptual model for teaching chained mathematical tasks to students with severe disabilities, (b) report of the impact of peer-assisted pictorial self-instruction on chained mathematical tasks for students with severe disability, (c) report of the impact on technology-based pictorial self-instruction on chained mathematical tasks for students with autism spectrum disorder, and (d) report of the effects of pictorial self-instruction with generalization across iDevices on personal finance chained tasks for students with Down syndrome.

Teaching students with severe disabilities to solve mathematical problems is not only an important academic skill, but also a functional skill important in adult life. The model is constructed on four foundational components: (a) build on research from early literacy for text comprehension of the word problem (e.g., Browder, Trela, & Jimenez, 2007; Mims, Hudson, & Browder, 2012); (b) adapt research on schema-based instruction for solving word problems (Jitendra et al., 2009; Jitendra & Hoff, 1996); (c) apply research on teaching mathematics to students with severe disabilities: task analysis and prompting (Browder, Spooner, Ahlgrim-Delzell, Harris, & Wakeman, 2008; Browder et al., 2012), and (d) use research on generalization and peer tutors (Carter, Sisco, Melekoglu, & Kurkowski, 2007; Cushing, Clark, Carter, & Kennedy, 2005; Spooner, Kemp-Inman, Ahlgrim-Delzell, Wood, & Ley Davis, 2015; Stokes & Baer, 1977). The theoretical foundations of the model and its instructional components will be demonstrated. The model served as the conceptual framework around which instruction was built.

Research reveals that the academic accomplishments of students with severe disabilities increase through interaction with typically developing peers in an integrated environment (Brinker & Thorpe, 1984, Westling & Fox, 2009). Moving students with severe disabilities toward independence in inclusive educational settings is an aspiration of many professionals and families within the field of special education. Mathematical tasks within general education classes are typically chained and require a high level of metacognition, which are two areas of weakness for students with severe disabilities. The intense level of individual instruction required by students with severe disabilities presents a barrier to inclusive mathematics instruction if teachers or other adults are the only intervention agents. This presentation will prevent findings from a single-case research study that used a multiple probe across participants design to examine the effects of using peer-mediated pictorial instructoin to teach students with severe disabilities to solve chained mathematical tasks. Results found a functional relation between intervention and mathematical problem solving. The significance of these findings, including the ability of peers to deliver systematic instruction with a high degree of fidelity, along with directions for future research will be discussed.

The current study evaluated the effects of a treatment package that included pictorial self-instruction on a technology platform to teach middle school students with autism and moderate intellectual disability to independently complete chained mathematical tasks. Participants learned to solve and discriminate between two types of word problems. Participants were taught how to use an iPad that displayed a task analysis with embedded verbal and specific verbal prompts. In addition, participants were taught key vocabulary terms related to math problem solving. Results of the multiple probe across participants design show a functional relation between constant time delay and acquisition of mathematics vocabulary terms as well as between pictorial self-instruction and mathematical problem solving. The findings of this study provide several implications for practice for using pictorial self-instruction and offer suggestions for future research in this area.

Solving mathematical problems related to purchasing and personal finance is important in promoting skill generalization and increasing independence for individuals with moderate intellectual disability (ID). Using a multiple probe across participants design, this study investigated the effects of a treatment package that included pictorial self-instruction on solving chained mathematical tasks related to personal finance. Middle school students with moderate intellectual disability were taught to use a calculator and a task analysis to solve word problems related to items being on sale or needing to leave a tip. The results showed a functional relation between the treatment package and the ability to both solve problems and generalize across devices (e.g., classroom calculator, iPhone, iPad). Findings of this study provide several implications for practice and offers suggestions for future research.

The Morningside Model of Generative Instruction (MMGI) is a research based protocol for teaching learners of all ages and grades. Over 125 schools in the US and Canada have successfully implemented MMGI with both typically developing students who struggle in school, and children with disabilities. In this symposium, presenters will highlight successful innovations in implementing MMGI with middle school, high school and college students. In the first presentation, Brien McGuire will describe a procedure for going beyond standard fluency building procedures to design individualized, targeted fluency practice for students in a pre-algebra class. In the second presentation, Nicole Erickson will present procedures for teaching learners themselves to use MMGIs teacher led delayed prompting procedures to coach each other in applying written composition and conceptual mathematics methods to new assignments beyond those presented during instruction. In the third presentation, Scott Beckett will describe how MMGI design, diagnosis, precision teaching, and explicit instruction procedures have been adapted to remediate algebra deficiencies in students at Jacksonville State University. In the fourth presentation, Shiloh Isbell will describe her design of a web-based application to teach reinforce, and build the fluency of organizational skills of adolescents who struggle in high school.

Developmental algebra presents a huge hurdle for 50% of college students nationwide, preventing many from graduating. Students exhaust financial aid and lose earning potential, and schools lose tuition dollars. At Jacksonville State University, Board Certified Behavior Analysts in Learning Skills have designed an accelerated developmental algebra course that blends online, adaptive instruction (provided by EdReady) with in-class, evidence-based teaching practices adapted from the Morningside Model of Generative Instruction. Over the past four semesters, students with an average age of 19 have increased passing rates from below 50% to above 75%, ACT composite scores from 17-19. Roughly equal percentages of females and males, and African-Americans and Caucasians achieved substantial improvements. Two on-site Board Certified Behavior Analysts train and supervise four psychology graduate students as teaching assistants, resulting in a four to one student to teacher ratio. The graduate students commit to two years and earn 1500 supervision hours at no cost as partial payment for their teaching. They learn and apply MMGIs component-composite analysis, diagnosis and remediation, precision teaching, and explicit instruction components. They have also created flashcards and practice sheets aligned with the online developmental math curriculum.

Students struggling in school with organization deficits need to be taught skills such as homework organization, time management, self-advocacy, and project management. Once these skills are fluent, students notice improvement in their grades, work quality, and stress level. Unfortunately, these reinforcers are often too far removed to maintain pro-student behaviors. This presentation discusses the creation of a computer application, Learning Lab Assistant, to promote organization skills in students with executive functioning problems, as well as data collection and analysis to determine app effectiveness. The main focus of the presentation is how to increase app interaction utilizing principles of gamification as viewed within a behavior analytic framework. Gamification as a concept will be explained, including critical and variable features, as well as a discussion of player and reinforcement types. The effectiveness of changes in app design to include gamified aspects is shown using student engagement data collected by the Learning Lab Assistant app.

Practitioners and researchers in the field of behavior analysis often encounter individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who present with complex learning problems or behavior that does not readily respond to even good-quality ABA services (Sallows & Graupner, 2005). In the field, these children might be labeled as "non-responders" and many have long learning histories which have resulted in faulty stimulus control such as biased responding or prompt dependency. While it is quite fortunate that so many research and best-practice publications and trainings are now aimed at disseminating strategies to decrease the likelihood of developing those types of learning patterns, there is a relative lack of information to help practitioners address those learning barriers where they exist. In this symposium, presenters will share research and clinical data from their work with these children, and describe the approaches they have used to spur progress in areas of difficulty such as listener responding, imitation, and conditional matching. The presenters will also outline the analysis of target and prerequisite skills necessary with this population, and suggest programmatic and curricular changes that will maximize learner performance with these specific skills as well as functioning and independence in daily life.

For many years the term "non-responder" has been used to connote those individuals who make little or no progress in Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI) programs. While there is little debate that such individuals exist, the description is hardly consistent with a scientific requirement of a technological description of the phenomena. Non-responders respond. They respond incorrectly (from the point of view of the instructor), they may display high levels of problem behavior, low levels of correct responding and a multitude of off-task, distracted and otherwise interfering behavior. In short, significant levels of responding are occurring, just not under the control of the relevant stimuli. The question is how to account for this failure to bring responding under instructional control. One must either conclude that the operant learning paradigm may not apply to this learner or accept the fact that despite their best efforts, the clinicians have not yet identified and controlled the controlling variables. This presentation will highlight three cases where individuals identified as not making progress in EIBI programs where subjected to more detailed analyses. Program modification made as a result of these analyses resulted in previously described non-responders becoming effective learners in the context of EIBI programming.

Receptive learning difficulties are commonly observed with children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Recent research investigations have focused primarily on preventing the occurrence of ineffective learning strategies. Recommendations include counterbalancing location of the target stimulus within the stimulus array and order of occurrence of target stimuli within sets of trials. Additionally, research and clinical practice has focused on the adherence to strict prompting protocols. Such strategies focus on what not to do, rather than helping the student learn what to do. There are a number of complementary skills including "learning how to listen" that have not been sufficiently explored in the research literature that could potentially facilitate success in conditional discrimination tasks. Drawing upon clinical experience as well as our published research we will discuss potential strategies for improving students' success with receptive language, provide recommendations for clinicians who work with individuals diagnosed with ASD, and provide ideas for future research projects.

Despite evidence-based practices for teaching receptive identification (i.e., auditory-visual conditional discrimination) to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a proportion of these children do not acquire this skill. The lack of acquisition during training may relate to the absence of important, prerequisite skills for successful auditory-visual conditional discrimination training. An assessment of prerequisite skills for auditory-visual conditional discrimination can help identify missing skills in need of intervention such as simple visual or auditory discriminations. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of research to guide researchers and practitioners on how to teach these missing prerequisite skills once they are identified. This presentation will describe several interventions to teach missing prerequisite skills for auditory-visual conditional discrimination training with children and adolescents with ASD. We will describe treatment challenges encountered while teaching these prerequisite skills. Suggestions for modifications to training procedures that could improve the success of teaching prerequisite skills for auditory-visual conditional discrimination will be provided, and we will discuss the importance of persisting with the identification of effective strategies for clients who have a slow response to common behavioral interventions.

Many young children with autism have difficulty learning to exhibit skills that are part of developmental curricula. These skills include identical and arbitrary matching, vocal or motor imitation, listener responses that require conditional discriminations, tacts, and intraverbal responses. Many of these same children seldom experience stimulus generalization or induction. Dr. McGreevy will suggest curricular alternatives that should be considered when children experience these barriers and are no longer candidates for effective, formal, academic inclusion. One of these alternatives, Essential for Living, was co-authored by Dr. McGreevy and is composed of functional communication skills and pragmatic language skills, along with functional daily living and tolerating skills that are designed to prepare children for personally fulfilling experiences as children and adults and effective participation in their family life and their communities. These skills are taught in contexts that are the same or similar to those which they will encounter in daily living, which precludes the necessity for stimulus generalization and induction.

Some authors claim that over the last decades the experimental and applied analyses of behavior have become disconnected. However, a thorough analysis of the literature shows that this trend toward insularity has been somewhat reversed over the last decade by an emphasis on translational research. Three factors could account for a change in trend toward more basic�applied interaction. First, the rise of functional analysis methodology that is used to identify the contingencies that generate and maintain problem behavior. Second, the editorial leadership of JABA and JEAB has prompted attention toward basic research of potentially applied relevance. Finally, basic researchers are increasingly urged by funding agencies to strengthen the translational potential of their work. Above all, translational research is essential to a cohesive behavior analysis. The present symposium presents a range of studies from four different labs under the common theme of translational research. Specifically, presenters will discuss empirical translational work in the following areas: differential outcomes effect (McCormack), the signaling effect of reinforcers (Cowie), delayed reinforcement (Fernandez), and vicarious punishment (Koehler). These studies provide an overview of current translational research.

The differential outcomes procedure has been found to enhance conditional discrimination learning in animals and humans. In conditional discrimination learning, the subjects learns to make one response in the presence of stimulus A (the discriminative stimulus) and another in the presence of stimulus B. By pairing each discriminative stimulus with a unique reward or reinforcer it provides an addition cue to correct responding. This can lead to faster and more accurate learning, as well as the development of equivalence relations. In addition, there is evidence to suggest that reinforcers can become part of the relational frame of discriminative stimuli. Thus, the differential outcomes procedure provides an opportunity to evaluate the extent to which differential reinforcers can induce distinct emergent relationships. In the present study, we taught novel labels to four boys with developmental or intellectual disability. Three of the four boys met mastery sooner in the differential outcomes condition relative to the variable outcomes condition. In addition, we tested for the emergence of equivalence relations, and found that stimulus-outcome or response-outcome relations emerged in three out of four students. Three of the participants participated in a subsequent transfer phase where we introduced novel stimuli requiring the same vocal response. Only two of the boys were able to meet mastery criteria for the new stimuli and both met mastery sooner in the differential outcomes condition. The study provides evidence for the effectiveness of the differential outcomes procedure in children with disabilities and provide an empirical basis for the addition of differential outcomes in behaviour acquisition programs.

The assumption that reinforcers strengthen behavior forms the foundation of many behavior-analytic interventions. However, recent basic research suggests that reinforcers control behavior because of what they signal about events that are likely to occur in the immediate future, rather than because they strengthen the behavior they follow. We extended an experimental paradigm used with non-human animals to study reinforcer control of choice in children. Seven typically developing children and one child diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder played a game where opening one of two drawers would result in a reinforcer. The probability of the next reinforcer being obtained for opening the same drawer as had produced the last reinforcer was varied across conditions. Generally, children chose the drawer more likely to produce the next reinforcer, even on occasions when a different response had been reinforced in the preceding trial. This finding suggests that strengthening may be an unnecessary construct, and that a better understanding of how appetitive consequences control behaviour may be achieved using an alternative framework.

Recent research on the effects of delayed reinforcement on response maintenance in children with ASD suggests that reinforcer delays degrade response maintenance at delay values that varied from 6 to 120 seconds (Leon, Borrero, and DeLeon, 2016). However, this preparation examined the effects of delays under conditions in which no programmed alternatives to target responding were available, which seems unrealistic in relation to what a child might encounter in natural environment. In the present study, we first compared response maintenance with no programmed reinforcement in the presence and absence of freely available alternatives. We then added reinforcement for responding and parametrically increased the delay to reinforcement while retaining the freely available alternative. The results suggest that arranging a concurrently available alternative activity makes children less likely to persist in the absence of reinforcement, but performances do not deteriorate at markedly lower delays than previously observed if alternative activities remain present. Subsequent analyses compare whether this remains true for primary and conditioned reinforcers.

This symposium will look at several procedures to teach requisite skills needed for conditional responding to a variety of stimuli across visual-visual, and auditory-visual, and auditory discriminations. The first study used a basic go/no-go procedure in an attempt to establish two three-member equivalence classes for six typically developing adults, and to test whether this type of preparation could be a viable alternative to the traditional matching-to-sample (MTS) procedure. The second study replicated previous research comparing whether sample-first or comparison-first presentations eased acquisition of auditory-visual discriminations for seven typically-developing children. The third study compared three procedures to teach auditory discrimination to three children with ASD-like behaviors. The fourth study utilized a shaping procedure to establish auditory discrimination skills for three children with autism. All procedures were effective in teaching skills to adults and children with and without disabilities, and included procedural modifications that may be useful in developing alternative evidence-based teaching technologies to fragile learners.

Although the utility of the matching-to-sample procedure (MTS) has been shown in both basic and applied settings, it requires participants to demonstrate several prerequisite skills such as simple-simultaneous and simple-successive discriminations. Our lab has conducted four experiments with 24 undergraduate students to evaluate the effectiveness of a Successive MTS (S-MTS) procedure in which only one stimulus is presented at a time. In these experiments participants were taught to touch a single comparison after the presentation of its related sample (e.g., touch B1 after A1), and not touch the comparison after the presentation of the unrelated sample (e.g., not touch B1 after A2). Although all participants learned conditional relations, participants who failed equivalence tests may have done so due to a history of reinforcement during baseline probes. In the current experiment with six participants, the removal of probes yielded similar performance (data attached). We will discuss additional manipulations, including the manipulation of experimental instructions.

Receptive identification trials can be conceptualized as match-to-sample (MTS) trials in which reinforcement of a particular comparison selection (e.g., a picture) is conditional upon the presence of a specific sample stimulus (e.g., a spoken word). Consistent with common laboratory practices and related clinical recommendations, Petursdottir & Aguilar (2016) found a reliable sample-first advantage when they taught typically developing boys to identify birds and flags via laptop. The present series of experiments followed up on this finding. Experiment 1 was a systematic replication of Petursdottir & Aguilar (2016) that included prompted error correction trials following incorrect responses. Four typically developing 5- and 6-year-old boys participated. Acquisition in the sample-first and the comparison-first condition was compared in an adapted alternating-treatments design with replication across stimulus sets. An advantage of sample-first presentation was seen in 4 of 7 evaluations, whereas 2 evaluations suggested a comparison-first advantage. Thus, the sample-first advantage was less reliable than in the previous study. Possible reasons are discussed, and a second experiment is in progress to compare acquisition under sample-first and comparison-first conditions with and without error correction.

Auditory discrimination is a skill that many learners with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have difficulty acquiring, demonstrating, and maintaining. Development of appropriate stimulus controlwhere the auditory stimulus controls respondingcan be challenging, as auditory stimuli and visual stimuli often co-occur in discrete trial arrangements. In the current study, we detail a procedure used with three learners with ASD to enhance the likelihood that auditory stimuli, and not visual stimuli, controlled their responding. BIGMack buttons were used to play recorded sounds. Initially, learners were taught to orient to a sound played through a single BIGMack button (activated remotely out of view). Second, they were taught to locate the button playing the sound with one, and then two, distractor buttons. Next, we decreased the spacing between buttons to form a three-button array. Lastly, learners were taught to respond to the button that played the sound after the experimenter activated the buttons directly. Students 1 and 2 were able demonstrate auditory discrimination at acquisition levels. We were unable to transfer stimulus control for Student 3 once the experimenter pressed the buttons. Implications for enhancing the effectiveness of stimulus control procedures used to teaching auditory discrimination will be discussed.

In a typical resurgence paradigm, a target behavior (R1) is acquired in an initial phase and extinguished in a second phase while an alternative behavior (R2) is reinforced. When reinforcement for the second response is removed, R1 behavior returns or resurges. Three experiments studied the effectiveness of a retrieval cue in attenuating the resurgence effect in rats. Experiment 1 established that a 2-second cue associated with alternative reinforcement in Phase 2 of a resurgence paradigm can attenuate R1 resurgence and promote R2 behavior. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this effect remains when the cue is delivered contingently or noncontingently during the test, and Experiment 3 demonstrated that for the cue to be effective in reducing resurgence, it must be paired with alternative reinforcement during Phase 2. Together, these results suggest that a neutral cue can serve as an effective retrieval cue if it is paired with alternative reinforcement. By the time of the May meeting, several experiments investigating the mechanism through which this cue attenuates resurgence will also have been conducted.

Relapse of problem behavior after treatment is a problem frequently faced by clinicians. Resurgence is one such form of treatment relapse, defined as the recurrence of a previously reinforced and then extinguished target response when extinguishing a more recently reinforced alternative response. Resurgence also occurs when alternative reinforcement rate is reduced across sessions. This translational study conducted with children sought to evaluate resurgence when challenging alternative responding with progressive-ratio schedules. To simulate problem behavior, we first reinforced an arbitrary target response, then extinguished target responding while reinforcing an arbitrary alternative response. Finally, we examined resurgence of target responding either by (1) extinguishing alternative responding or (2) introducing a progressive-ratio schedule of reinforcement for alternative responding. Resurgence was demonstrated in both conditions in all participants. For three of four, resurgence in extinction phase was greater than in progressive-ratio phase. These findings emphasize the importance of compliance to procedure fidelity in differential-reinforcement treatments and imply that frequent monitoring of treatment integrity is essential for all therapists and caregivers. Implications of using progressive-ratio schedule to predict an ultimate goal for scheduling alternative reinforcement is also discussed.

The field of Behavior Analysis has grown and diversified over the last 60 years in both its basic and applied approach. As the field continues to grow, the expansion of the current scope of practice becomes increasingly relevant for the continued evolution of the field. Interdisciplinary collaboration and diversification of practice, as well as, research has become a distinctly important topic of discussion for the field. Research and practice across standard disciplinary bounds has begun to emerge, especially between behavior analysis and medicine. Despite the initial emergence of this collaborative approach it remains an area largely uncharted and often difficult to break into, particularly for graduate students. This panel will discuss various steps the field can take to expand the scope of practice between behavior analysis and medicine, as well as, describe some of the available avenues of research and application that are currently emerging through the cross disciplinary work of behavior analysis and the medical field. The Panelists: Dr. Keith Allen, Dr. Alison Cox, and Dr. Manish Vaidya will discuss the various projects they are involved in and how these areas expand the scope of practice for behavior analysts and promote cross disciplinary work.

Behavior analysts often discuss the need to disseminate our science. How do we effectively disseminate the science of behavior analysis? Should we maintain our precise language or utilize language that would be better consumed by the audience that we are interacting with? How do we set the occasion for interacting with other professionals such that we can initiate conversations regarding behavior analysis and the partnerships that we could create? This panel discussion is designed to address these issues and provide examples and non-examples of successful dissemination. Our panelists will give their perspectives on these questions, provide examples of their successful dissemination efforts, as well as explain barriers they have faced in their attempts to disseminate.

This session immediately follows Dr. Tim Shahan's SQAB tutorial entitled "Relapse," which introduces the fundamental principles underlying resurgence, renewal, and reinstatement. Panelists will be asked to speak briefly about their research program and to bring questions designed to foster discussion with audience members. The goal is to generate ideas and collaborative efforts among basic, translational, and applied scientists. The tutorial and panel discussion arose because the Society for the Quantitative Analysis of Behavior (SQAB), an organization that emphasizes fundamental sciences related to behavior analysis, meets immediately before ABAI. The tandem meetings of these two organizations present opportunities for attendees to hear about core sciences related to behavior analysis. The SQAB tutorials have provided an excellent spur for such discussions but SQAB and ABAI's Science Board wish to take this a step further. This panel discussion, which represents a partnership between SQAB and ABAI, will create a setting in which basic and applied scientists, as well as practitioners, can meet to discuss applications of the topics raised in a SQAB tutorial.

The target audience is investigators involved with translating or applying the core principles of behavior analysis.

A common conference theme is the need for bridging the gap between the basic and applied behavior analysts for a more cohesive and coherent analysis of behavior. One particular void is that of time and timing. A survey of basic and applied literature on timing reveals an inconsistent array of studies, either experimental work without applicable value or interventions without a clear tie to basic principles. For example, the effectiveness of mindfulness training, particularly as it related to present moment awareness, is well documented. Nevertheless, there is little experimental work that explains how the process of focusing on the present functions to promote wellness. A more coherent discussion of time and timing is needed to bolster the foundation of successful treatments as well as strengthen basic research as it pertains to other temporal repertoires, like delay discounting. The symposium will begin with a behavior analytic review of present moment awareness, followed by an experimental presentation tying applied and basic work on time by addressing the two essential behavioral repertoires for timing: awareness and verbal behavior.

Being present or mindful has come to be fairly widely accepted as a psychological strength. Defined in clinical psychology as bringing ones complete attention to the present experience on a moment-to-moment basis, mindfulness has been associated with a range of positive behavioral outcomes. In psychotherapy interventions, including some with behavior analytic foundations, this is reflected in the frequent inclusion of present moment awareness and/or mindfulness as a target behavior. Less common has been the consideration of mindfulness as a target behavior in more traditional Applied Behavior Analysis interventions. This is odd, considering its apparent utility as a repertoire, and may be related to confusion between mindfulness as a behavior and mindfulness meditation as an intervention. This paper will (1) offer a behavior analytic definition of present moment awareness, (2) explore verbal repertoires that interfere with present moment awareness, and (3) argue for its relevance for many clients served by ABA, not only as an independent target behavior but also in facilitation of behavioral cusps.

As the saying goeswhat goes unmeasured, goes unmanaged. Time management is often cited as a desirable skill, although there are few behavioral measurements to track it. Often discussed at the applied level and rarely at the basic level, there remains a vacuum of understanding by what we call time management. Much of the work that has been done relies on mentalistic notions of motivation or appeals to neurological clocks. Exploring the repertoires involved with timing behavior under controlled conditions (e.g., reporting and estimating time intervals) may later provide a more productive avenue for practitioners to train time management. Taking the same view as Gibsons ecological view that events are perceivable but time is not, the presentation will address a systematic investigation of how timing is shaped in verbal humans. Preliminary studies with university psychology students assessed the degree of accuracy one can report interval duration without a clock. Current data demonstrate that timing strategies seem to correctly discriminate a fixed versus variable time schedule, but decreased sensitivity to verbal antecedents during the task. The opposite findings were observed for participants without timing strategies. Subsequent studies will discuss how rule governed behavior influence timing accuracy and time management skills.